Seagate to pre-load HDDs with movies

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Drivemaker Seagate has announced that it's formed a deal with Paramount that'll see the latter company's movies pre-loaded onto Seagate's hard drives before sale. There'll be around 20 movies loaded onto each 500GB FreeAgent Go drive.

However, before you start getting too excited, you won't just be able to watch them. They're swathed in DRM, meaning you'll be forced to purchase a $10 license for each one - a total of $200 for the whole lot - before you're allowed to gain access. Once you've paid, it's not clear if you can then move the film around, or whether it has to remain on the hard drive.

Malik Ducard of Paramount said: "We have teamed up to create what we think is a unique offering that will help jumpstart the creation of digital home movie collections". We assume he means legal digital home movie collections, there, as many people have been collecting movies for a number of years.

Seagate added: "This is a big step for Seagate, we believe we are addressing a real customer need to get movies and view them wherever they want. We think if we are to grow this market we have to find new uses for hard drives". As soon as a crack appears for the licenses, we'd be very surprised if Seagate doesn't find them start selling rather well.